I Am A Wild Blue Beast

(Zulu)

"Once there was a haunted loopOf your deep, fallen tearsA forehead resting on a record shelfAmid moving boxes stackedI'm still waiting for the right wordsMake of that what you will"

A.C. Newman "There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve"

Last weekend I went to the Maker Faire, held every year art the San Mateo fairgrounds, halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. You can see me getting sprayed (in 3D!) with Diet Coke and Menthos at the website http://makerfaire.com/bayarea. I'm the guy in the red baseball cap at the extreme right side of the screen who runs away at 0:54 in the video. Yeah... there was a limit to how sticky and wet I was willing to get!

Make Faire had lots of other things besides Diet Coke and Methos fountains. There was a giant life-sized version of the "Mousetrap" game. Tesla motors was there, while other people brought their own "art cars" covered in legos and other things. The steampunks brought fire-breathing nautilus sculptures, burlesque shows, and lots of goggles. There were punk rock shows, jugglers, welders, painters, farmers, and barrel makers. Basically it was an event for anyone who creates, builds, or dreams: knitters, engineers, the SCA, programmers, robots, and teachers. And I had a fantastic time. Check out my flickr page for photos at:

I have mixed feelings about Maker Faire. One hand, it's a fantastic opportunity, a Burning Man right in my own backyard. But still I have an uneasy feeling. The problem is that the whole event is supposed to be about D.I.Y. culture. Think about that for a second... "do it yourself" sponsored by a large corporation who publishes a magazine telling people the "right things" to build.

I like the sponsor, O'Reilly Publishing. No, let me take that back... I *love* O'Reilly. I think they publish the best computer books out there. They usually don't include a worthless CD-ROM or DVD. That cuts the cost right there. And if you send in the title page, you can cheaply upgrade to the latest version of that book when new versions of the software come out. I think I've spent about a thousand dollars on books from O'Reilly for both work and school.

But now they are trying to codify something that was growing organically. I am reminded of that moment in the nineties when "grunge" went from a great art and music movement into a commercialized advertisement for soulless youth culture. Target was selling pre-ripped flannel shirts. TV commercials featured the Screaming Trees. They made the movie "Singles", which caused Kurt Cobain to kill himself.

Here is my problem: check out the piles and piles of boxes for sale. I remember as a kid playing with science kits. You mixed one fluid with another fluid and it turned blue. Was it fun? Hell yes! Did I learn anything? Nope. That's not science... it's a cheap trick to amuse hyperactive children. I used to spend hours by myself pouring water down things... the sink, down the gutters, just to see the way water moved and cavitated. I learned more about physics from bouncing rubber balls than I ever did in elementary school.

And there were kids *everywhere* at this thing. It was one giant playground for tots and adults alike. People with ADD would have a hard time. Neon art and tv screens showing animation and people in costumes were everywhere. But instead of making things... the event seemed to be about CONSUMING.

There were some hot men there too. Sword fighters and coopers (barrel makers) and guys covered in grease and oil from working on steam engines. Yum! And I met daved010 and bigtallnoljandy for the first time, and they seem like really great bears (see above).

I love the idea of steampunk. This fetish came out of *nowhere* for me. I mean, I had seen Victorian cosplay in the nineties, and saw a lot of anime ("Howl's Moving Castle" and "Steamboy" come to mind, but there were tons of others earlier than that). Now all of a sudden, people are having conventions about the theme. It's wonderful when a whole community springs up that didn't exist before.

I'm hoping to go to Steamcon this summer, or the California Steampunk Convention though I'm hoping to not be living in California by then. However, I a fantastic idea for a costume that really turns me on. Maker Fairs gave me one of those "Eureka" moments where everything clicked and I figured something out. Times like that are wonderful.

I'll be interested to watch the future of Maker Faire. This is the fourth annual one. And while it was well-attended, I'm wondering if the center cannot hold. I mean... who *doesn't* make anything? If absolutely ANY occupation can have a booth there, what does being a "Maker" mean? Is there some Silicon Valley arbiter of tatse who says that custom car painters are cool while perfomance artists are not? It's typical California: hip and exciting and revolutionary at the same times as being oddly close-minded and exclusionary and annoying.

I don't want to get down on Maker Faire. I had a great time. There was a Camera Obscura you could go in and see and upside-down image of the world. I played pinball for free, and sat down at a REAL (not Rock Band) drumset for a jam session with a 10 year old kid and his dad. I did the backwards-spinning hula hoop trick my Pakistani neighbor taught me as a kid, and the moppets were amazed. I thought of bentwright and picked up ads for welding and blacksmith classes and told myself that I was finally going to learn a trade and hobby that left me black, grimy, oily, and happy. I only wish the fair didn't stop at 6 pm so I could have seen all the Tesla coils and fire-breathing sculptures at night, as the Makers intended.

I have more than a bit of jealousy here. My life is busy. I have not had the time or space to do my hobbies. I would love a HUGE workspace filled with tools (and an oil pit to store the excess sludge from my projects!) I once had a friend who would go to rock concerts with me. He would cross his arms and scowl. He would pick apart the smallest imperfections, and rip the band to pieces afterwards at the coffee shop. It turned out that he was unhappy he wasn't in a band. He saw people doing on stage what he wanted to do, and it drove him crazy that they weren't doing it "right"... the weren't doing it the way he longed to do it. I felt like that at Maker Faire. The projects that excited me weren't the ones that were great... it was the ones who missed the mark and I knew I could do better.

Why make stuff? It's cheaper to buy a new MP3 player than to buld your own. Are you just trying to impress some other hipsters on how well you fit a 386 mouthboard into a toaster? Well hooray for you. I'm glad you're having fun.

Today's circuit boards are coated with epoxy. You couldn't desolder and pull the parts if you wanted to. When I was a kid, the television sets had these HUGE capacitors, resistors, and vacuum tubes that you could remove and use in your own projects. Even though I'd love to disassemble my roommate's new plasma TV just to see what it looked like inside, I doubt the project would be rewarding.

But I am so energized right now. I want to make a list. I have not been doing much on my New Year's Resolutions. But I have a few "million dollar ideas" in me. Many of them are stupid, most of them impractical, but there's nothing like have a dream and then doing things to make that dream a tangible reality.

Oh my holy g-d. it seems like if you joke about something tech, there's someone out there trying to do it. One day, I ranted about wanting to "rip" my book into txt files as easily as making an MP3. A day later, I read that lo and behold... Google is doing exactly that.